Hasbro's Most Baffling MLP Decisions

[Leave a Whisper]

I'll add flutter pony wings fragility. Fortunately its easy to make or buy a sturdier pair.

[Minty_Magic]

To this day I’m STILL baffled by Hasbro’s decision to move away from collectibility to just a core cast of characters for the toys. The thing that drew me to MLP as a kid was all the different characters! I loved going to the store and seeing what new ponies were out. If it was just the same few ponies over and over in the toy aisle I don’t think I would have gotten hooked on MLP like I did. Ah well, on the bright side all the re-releases are good for my wallet! I don’t buy as many new ponies anymore since…there just isn’t anything new to get.

[Leave a Whisper]

Their open disdain of generation 1, which put this toyline on the map, and generation 3 which brought it back to wild popularity. All to appease a niche' group of toxic creeps.

[Mrs. Prospector]

My own contribution here is G4 Applejack having eyebrows. Did anyone ever find out why she has them? It drives me crazy when I think about it. It's so odd!! Who decided she should have them? Why was everyone else involved with the final design okay with it too? Why was it only her and no other ponies??

I think it's maybe because they were basing it of this one old piece of concept art?
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I always thought that was weird too. They honestly did Applejack's toys so dirty. No hat, no freckles, eyebrows, weird "shy" looking eyes, more yellow than orange-no wonder she was the worst seller among the Mane 6.

Speaking of pony eyes, why did they change Fluttershy's eyes from sweet and dreamy
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To looking like she's having war flashbacks?
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The old ones were so much cuter and more show accurate, I don't understand at all.

[Taffeta]

Their open disdain of generation 1, which put this toyline on the map, and generation 3 which brought it back to wild popularity. All to appease a niche' group of toxic creeps.

At the end of the day, it was about money, and Hasbro wanted to appear cool, but were dealing with a completely different market to their usual demographic...

I think Basic Fun's success with the retro ponies startled them a little bit more though. Now they talk about retro stuff more than they did initially, when they were keen to tell everyone the BF ponies were nothing to do with them.

That said, it may also be that reason which allowed BF the licence to produce Celestials...so...

[MJNSEIFER]

At the end of the day, I don't think Hasbro had any disdain towards G1, or any of their previous generations - I know that they released some joke videos about it towards the end of G4, but I think that's all they were - jokes, like you can playfully mock yourself, but that's probably all it was (I will admit I didn't watch them, so I don't know for sure - I only glanced at the Megan one.)

The thing is, Hasbro put a thing online where they asked bronies to be nicer to the pre-"Equestria" ponies, and to give them a chance too - I remember bronies being surprised that Hasbro would stand up for the generations before G4, as they weren't making money from them, which obviously isn't the point, but yeah... Hasbro stood up for G1-G3.5, so ultimately I don't think they have anything against it...

I mean, they even payed homage to G1 in G5 not that long ago (though that may have been the writers, rather than Hasbro) and it was beautiful in my opinion - at the end of the day, I think Hasbro appreciate where they came from, even if some bronies don't.

[Leave a Whisper]

The mouth holes on the Soda Sippin Ponies are bizarre. Did hasbro just forget where mouths are supposed to be located? They're pretty girls though.

[Ragamuffin]

MLP's 40th Anniversary.

Basic Fun did a good job as a third party, but Hasbro was just embarrassing. In general, a complete lack of content. "Let's release a digital album... and only put one song on it!" (if you want to be fair, it's multiple remixes of the same one song). Let's do a clothing collab... and make everything black and white (or at least, have minimal colour)? The Loungefly stuff this year was cute but it wasn't necessarily "40th Anniversary". It was just more MLP like they've been doing. Same with the Erst Wilder, La Vidriola, and Oodie collabs... they're just kind of generic products and nothing celebratory. Compare to Care Bears who introduced a character that celebrated the brand, Care-a-Lot Bear. Make Your Mark had the Bridlewood special. Ruby Jubilee happened but she's never going to appear in the series again and she will absolutely not get a toy. We hardly got ANY toys this year from Hasbro. Their big showing at the Toy Fair was the Marestream playset, which had been out for MONTHS, if not a year. LPS had a bigger presence. Care Bears is always getting something new, left and right. We're getting more plushes from Basic Fun, at least? Stores like Walmart are slowly getting rid of the MLP section.

Terrible and embarrassing year.

Unpopular opinion, I think Applejack's eyebrows are cute. But I wish they gave her freckles. She has a sweet expression. G4's mid-generation reboot wasn't good. The faces are relatively more accurate, but I wish they had more sculpting. But the bodies are confusing. The first G4s had a more accurate bodytype... why did they make them so skinny, their necks so long, and their legs so short??? I could go on and on about Hasbro's handling of G4 but I'll end it on: why did they NEVER give Twilight Sparkle, the MAIN character, the CORRECT COLOUR FOR HER HAIR? It took them until G5 over 10 years later to give her blue hair!!

[Leave a Whisper]

Their insistence on making g4 boys with either moulded hair or that awful troll doll crap. And of course it all has to be short.

G5 toys with partial moulding is irritating. Hitch Trailblazer, Sprout, Opaline, Misty Brightdawn.

[SunbeamV]

.Hasbro is never good at My Little Pony from day one. They never respect little girls enough to put in meaningful effort. The toys keep getting worse.

this response really speaks to me, honestly. we're seeing proper studies now on how  crucial imaginative play is for children's healthy brain development. the shift from lovingly made, high quality toys/dolls that can easily last 2-3 generations to highly disposable garbage because kids handed an ipad from birth just don't have the attention span to play with a toy for more than a few weeks has just become this absolutely vicious cycle of a self fulfilling prophecy. like duh, with this new awful stringy hair and accessories that snap just getting them out of the box? i wouldn't have wanted to play with that as a kid either! heck, i barely want anything to do with it as an adult who knows how to restore/repair toys now

i had better as a kid which is why i want better for future generations too! this "trend" of horrible quality toys is quite literally giving kids brain damage.

sorry to absolutely go off lol i feel very strongly about this

[Leave a Whisper]

.Hasbro is never good at My Little Pony from day one. They never respect little girls enough to put in meaningful effort. The toys keep getting worse.

this response really speaks to me, honestly. we're seeing proper studies now on how  crucial imaginative play is for children's healthy brain development. the shift from lovingly made, high quality toys/dolls that can easily last 2-3 generations to highly disposable garbage because kids handed an ipad from birth just don't have the attention span to play with a toy for more than a few weeks has just become this absolutely vicious cycle of a self fulfilling prophecy. like duh, with this new awful stringy hair and accessories that snap just getting them out of the box? i wouldn't have wanted to play with that as a kid either! heck, i barely want anything to do with it as an adult who knows how to restore/repair toys now

i had better as a kid which is why i want better for future generations too! this "trend" of horrible quality toys is quite literally giving kids brain damage.

sorry to absolutely go off lol i feel very strongly about this

[Ponybookworm]

.Hasbro is never good at My Little Pony from day one. They never respect little girls enough to put in meaningful effort. The toys keep getting worse.

this response really speaks to me, honestly. we're seeing proper studies now on how  crucial imaginative play is for children's healthy brain development. the shift from lovingly made, high quality toys/dolls that can easily last 2-3 generations to highly disposable garbage because kids handed an ipad from birth just don't have the attention span to play with a toy for more than a few weeks has just become this absolutely vicious cycle of a self fulfilling prophecy. like duh, with this new awful stringy hair and accessories that snap just getting them out of the box? i wouldn't have wanted to play with that as a kid either! heck, i barely want anything to do with it as an adult who knows how to restore/repair toys now

i had better as a kid which is why i want better for future generations too! this "trend" of horrible quality toys is quite literally giving kids brain damage.

sorry to absolutely go off lol i feel very strongly about this

DO NOT APOLOGISE!!! This is legit & one of our MANY gripes!!!

[Taffeta]

I remember seeing Monster High on the shelves in 2011, 2012, whenever it was they first came out, and thinking, if I was a kid now, I'd walk past MLP and go for those. There was so much thought that went into each of the characters, as individuals. The shorts were funny as well, given the target market. Whatever I think of MH now or since, at that time, I felt like it was a better toyline with more care put into it than G4.

And that was when G4 did still have different characters, although the distribution for most of those hereabouts was awful. I got Honeybuzz and one other in Hamleys in London as I had moved down there for my MA - I never saw any of them again after that, anywhere.

I am not sure whether the disposability of toys now reflects the society we live in or is creating it, honestly.
I feel like we live in an angry, judgemental society, where people want solutions to problems RIGHT NOW but don't want to put in work or effort to overcome them.

It's maybe a poor comparison but when I was a kid, I didn't get bought a pony or a toy every time we went into town. I rarely got bought one, except on birthdays or Christmas, or if I had saved enough money. Usually after birthdays and Christmas. I therefore took time and care over the ponies I bought and I looked after them. I mostly had one pony from certain sets, never all of the sets, over a span of years. It kept getting a new pony exciting as it was such a rare event, but at the same time there were the comics to read which kept me engaged with the whole thing. The idea that someone can have a toy for ten seconds, then outgrow it and sell it at a carboot sale for peanuts is...an indictment to me of parenting.

I am sure there are tons of parents out there whose kids are like my sister and I were, saving up for things and taking good care of their toys, or playing with those handed down from siblings or cousins. But just those kids who have a toy one moment and get rid of it the next...this is only going to be a bigger societal problem going forward. If it isn't one already.

[Ponybookworm]

And that's just looking at it from a personal viewpoint. We NEED things to last, be collected & collectable, be able to be passed down to the next generation, to be easily fixable, for the simple reason the longer a toy is being loved, the more we get out of it AND the less likely it ends up being trashed. And the LAST thing the environment needs is stuff being trashed!!!

[Leave a Whisper]

And that's just looking at it from a personal viewpoint. We NEED things to last, be collected & collectable, be able to be passed down to the next generation, to be easily fixable, for the simple reason the longer a toy is being loved, the more we get out of it AND the less likely it ends up being trashed. And the LAST thing the environment needs is stuff being trashed!!!

Well said